One of the most misleading and dangerous words that all sane people need to exercise caution with—if not do away with altogether—is the “Left.”
Why? Because it bestows legitimacy on insanity and worse.
In current discourse, the Left and Right are seen as polar opposites on a continuum of political views. Imagine a horizontal line: the further right one goes, the more conservative, religious, traditional, one becomes; the further left, the more liberal, secular, and progressive.
Meanwhile, and here’s arguably the most misleading aspect of this paradigm, the middle of the line—the “centrist” position—becomes the default “middle ground,” the area where supposedly objective, non-ideologically charged people reside.
To a large extent, this paradigm is pure nonsense and exists only to legitimize falsehoods and corruption. It is built atop an assumption—that there are no truths, or if there are, they are somewhere in the middle. Inasmuch as one veers to the right or left they become “extremists.”
As one example, consider the rise of gender confusion, if not hysteria, where “identifying” with either gender—or make believe genders—automatically makes one of that gender, and woe to whoever objects. Anyone who refers to this development as “Leftist” unwittingly legitimizes it. After all, and as seen in the current model, the Left, by its very nomenclature, is part of a legitimate spectrum of political views, no different than the Right.
Based on this model, people on the “Right,” who staunchly believe there are two, and only two, genders, are merely the polar opposites of those who believe in an infinite amount of genders. Thus both deserve equal respect—equal legitimacy in the so-called discourse of ideas—certainly from the supposedly “objective” fellow in the “middle.”
In reality, there are only two genders—“Left/Right” constructs be damned. Affirming this scientific fact is not a “Rightist” position. It is a factual position. Anything that diverges from it, by a little or by a lot, is wrong, unworthy of consideration or debate and deserving of zero legitimacy. In this context, the Right is right, pure and simple; and everything that moves left of it is wrong. That includes the squishy “Chamber of Commerce” Right and certainly the Center — to say nothing of the Left, where unadulterated madness reigns.
For people of faith, especially monotheists, understanding what is going on, and what words to use, should be especially simple. After all, religions presuppose truths; that is what they are all about—offering a worldview based on truisms.
That truism may be that God created Adam and Eve or that homosexuality of any kind—even the by now banal man-on-man form—is a sin, literally, a missing of the mark, an error. Whatever that religious truism is, going against it should not be seen by the faithful as an “alternate” position, one on a make believe line stretching from right to left, with each extreme having its own “logic.”
Rather, anything that diverges even a little from truth should be seen for what it is—a falsehood, a lie, an error. In this more accurate context, those who howl about and spew gender nonsense can at last be seen for what they truly are: not “extreme Leftists,” but poor souls who suffer from insanity or possession. These descriptors may appear highly offensive—though no more offensive than the positions they describe—but at least they more accurately define what you’re really dealing with.
What about atheists and agnostics? There was a time when, despite their personal beliefs (or lack thereof), their worldview was still permeated by a heritage of rational thinking and logic—a word, not coincidentally, derived from Logos—so that they could deny God but also deny the current madness of the age. As time “progresses,” however, and as their connection to Logos becomes weaker and weaker, they, too, lose the ability to accept absolute truisms; and the current spirit of the age—“do what thou wilt”—becomes their default position.
Words matter; and the war on words is not limited to manipulating the meaning of man or woman, but rather manipulating people—including Christians and the ultra-conservative—into seeing politics through a so-called “Right/Left” prism.
So long as we continue to refer to madness or worse as “the Left,” so long will we continue to legitimize and give it a platform. More accurate words are needed. For people of faith who accept absolute truths in the realm of morality—or for people of reason who accept absolute facts in the realm of science—finding more accurate words should not be difficult.
When it comes to an increasing number of topics, there is no Right or Left; there is only Right or Wrong. The sooner this is acknowledged, the sooner sanity will have a chance of prevailing.
I’m amazed that no one has yet commented on this very important and soberly argued article. Could it be that even they are afraid of falling afoul of the alphabet people and other psychos? Kudos Mr Ibrahim, for your very clear sighted distinctions. What you say is absolutely true. Just a few generations ago, most of the positions currently identified with the “Left” would be seen for what you say, products of absolute tomfoolery or demonization, nothing else.
I’ll comment on it. It’s a dead accurate representation of the situation in this country. Thank you, Mr. Ibrahim. I’m at a loss to even understand how we got here?
This is a wonderful article. I just started reading a book by T.S. Elliot, “Christianity & Culture” which is based on three lectures he gave in March of 1939, and in it he made a similar argument. In Chapter 1, he talks about “Liberalism” where we might use the term “Leftism” in our current time period. He said “It is a movement not so much defined by it’s end, but as by it’s starting point; away from, rather than, towards something definite…By destroying traditional social habits of the people, by dissolving their natural collective consciousness into individual constituents, by licensing the opinions of the most foolish, by substituting instruction for education, by encouraging cleverness rather than wisdom, the upstart rather than the qualified, by fostering a notion of getting on to which the alternative is a hopeless apathy. Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is its own negation: the artificial, mechanised or brutalised control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos.”
So Elliot was saying that Liberalism (Leftism) leads us ultimately to chaos and societal collapse because it is always moving away from reality and objective truth. Thank you Raymond for an excellent argument!